Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday October 04, 2013 @04:34AM
from the it-can't-be-reasoned-with dept.

First time accepted submitter starr802 writes "Scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, have developed a 'jellyfish terminator' robot set out to detect the marine coelenterate and kill it. Scientists started developing the robots three years ago after South Korea experienced jellyfish attacks along its southwest coast, where they clogged fishing nets and ate fish eggs and plankton, Discovery News reports. The Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm or JEROS has two motors that let it move forward, backwards and rotate at 360 degrees." In related news, the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in southeastern Sweden was shut down recently after moon jellyfish overwhelmed the screens and filters in cooling pipes."

The parent post does not count as flamebait, quite the opposite, he has very bluntly and articulately identified the root cause of the current overabundance of jellyfish.

Humans can still fish (although we really should limit ourselves to recreational fishing, and stick with farmed fish for food production). But modern supertrawlers don't just decimate fish populations, they catch the entire population in an area.

You want to get rid of jellyfish, get rid of these floating offenses to biodiversity by any means possible. Ban them, sink them, make their crew pariahs. If the fish come back, the jellyfish will vanish.

Yes, it would make perfect sense to replace hunting at sea with farming, just as we did on land millennia ago, so that our use of seafood could become sustainable. So why does the Luddite lobby oppose every kind of fish farming, preferring to remain romantically identified with wild catch? When I question them on this, all I get is that one old talking point "Because the first attempts at fish farming involved crappy feed, overcrowding and disease, God said it has to be this way forever!"

"Nearly all salmon Americans eat are farm-raised -- grown in dense-packed pens near ocean shores, fed fish meal that can be polluted with toxic PCB chemicals, awash in excrement flushed out to sea and infused with antibiotics to combat unsanitary conditions. Some salmon are raised on farms that use more sustainable methods, but you can't tell from the packaging."

Overfishing + Climate change == oceans are screwed. So are we. Human history seems to indicate that nothing will be fixed until it is broken/a distaster has galvanized the population. Unfortunately these issues have no quick fixes once they are in the feedback loop...

Actually Climate change will raise ocean temperatures and make it EASIER for ocean life to thrive

Some types of Ocean life perhaps, but not necessarily the stuff that feeds or even the stuff that isn't unpleasant to share a swim. The stuff we don't care for so much Jellyfish and tiny creatures that we mostly experiences as mats of nasty scum will probably take over.

If the temperatures of sea water rise much it gets more acidic. Other complex life hostile chemical events around surfer and phosphorus might also turn it into a toxic soup.

If some of the marine biology people are right the rise in sea level is going to be the least of what we humans experience as problems. I am not at all convinced by the AGW science, I don't support carbon emissions regulation and might not even if we had conclusive evidence climate change was a man made event, because I think we should be making the investment in adaptation at this point. We are already near 400ppm its likely positive feed back at this point with our without us. We need to be looking geoengineering and finding solutions to actively control the climate.

See it positively: When the ocean turns into a toxic acidic soup, killing most animals living there, the dead animals will sink to the ocean floor and take their carbon with them. Indeed, it's likely that over millions of years, new crude oil will formed of them (who said crude oil was not renewable?). OK, so we probably won't be there to profit from it, but be assured the next intelligent species will be happy to boost their economy with all that oil we helped forming by burning the old one.

One of the fastest breeders of all is Mnemiopsis. Biologists characterize it as a “self-fertilizing simultaneous hermaphrodite,” which means that it doesn’t need a partner to reproduce, nor does it need to switch from one sex to the other, but can be both sexes at once. It begins laying eggs when just thirteen days old, and is soon laying 10,000 per day.

Jellyfish are voracious feeders. Mnemiopsis is able to eat over ten times its own body weight in food, and to double in size, each day.

The question of jellyfish death is vexing. If jellyfish fall on hard times, they can simply “de-grow.” That is, they reduce in size, but their bodies remain in proportion.

One kind of jellyfish, which might be termed the zombie jelly, is quite literally immortal. When Turritopsis dohrnii “dies” it begins to disintegrate, which is pretty much what you expect from a corpse. But then something strange happens. A number of cells escape the rotting body. These cells somehow find each other, and reaggregate to form a polyp. All of this happens within five days of the jellyfish’s “death,” and weirdly, it’s the norm for the species.

Some types of Ocean life perhaps, but not necessarily the stuff that feeds or even the stuff that isn't unpleasant to share a swim. The stuff we don't care for so much Jellyfish and tiny creatures that we mostly experiences as mats of nasty scum will probably take over.

Actually, that's what is happening right now - it's why there's a jellyfish problem to begin with. And algae blooms are common, all a direct result of ocean warming.

The stuff we like to eat from the water can't really survive - the algae de-o

Well, until the trend of oceans sinking up the carbon dioxide ends, it will become more and more acidic, killing all the marine life. Then, after it begins to heat up, much of the life will have already gone extinct. Just like when someone cooks your dinner, and then cools it down before it gets to your plate, it that doesn't reverse the process of cooking it.

Well, until the trend of oceans sinking up the carbon dioxide ends, it will become more and more acidic, killing all the marine life.

You purport that no marine life can live in an ocean with a ph of 7?The ocean is currently a base(how else could you have so much undissolved calcium carbonate in it? Aka coral), 'ocean acidification' from CO2 will only bring it to a neutral PH (7)

While I am sure some critters will have problems with a neutral ocean(Coral for example), I strongly doubt all of them would.

Mostly it's because colder water tends to be water brought up from the depths, which carries nutrients leached out of the ocean bottom. The Humbolt Current off the west coast of South America is a good example. There are several oceanic 'deserts' where very little grows because all the nutrients have been used up by the time currents carry the water there. They're in warm water areas of course, since the water has had time to warm up during its contact with the surface on the way there.

Not really. It depends on the reason the ocean temperatures rise. If it is because of increasing CO2, then the oceans become acidified thus killing reefs and destroying entire ecosystems. Even if CO2 doesn't make the temperature rise, it is bad news for ocean life.

While the nerd im me can't help to appreciate the tech in those things that make them auto-detect and kill stuff, I'm not convinced this is a good idea at all.Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the root cause of this problem, that is, overfishing?Did they even consider the consequences of generating 400 kilos of dead stuff an hour? Something will probably find this a nice food source. Are we going to kill that too, and where does this end?Are we sure it only kill jellyfish?

It would have to be a ship-sized device. I believe that for thermal depolymerization, the water contents is actually useful. The high percentage of water in jellyfish is worrisome, but the feasibility of the process depends on the efficiency of heat recovery from the exiting steam. Since ordinarily, the EROEI of the process is somewhere around five for "standard" inputs, it might still work.

Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the root cause of this problem, that is, overfishing?

Heh heh heh. Overfishing. I mean, that's part of the problem, but did you forget about acidification? (Let's just gloss over nuclear currents for a moment.) The significant sea creatures that can tolerate it gracefully are brittle stars [nature.com] and jellyfish [msn.com]. Algae will do okay as well, but kelp won't -- the increased acidification promotes algae that competes with it. So you get a big soup of stars, jellies, and algae. Mmmmmmmm good.

As for what the jellyfish become food for, it's everything below it, like always. Unless you have a problem with bottom-dwellers there's no reason to complain about that. The real issue is what we're doing to our biosphere that's causing these problems.

You don't seem to understand the concept of 'overfishing'. It's a short-term solution to feeding people, not a long term survival strategy. Overfish a species badly enough and the fishery collapses and doesn't recover, like the Peruvian anchovy fishery. Almost no one eats Humbolt Current anchovies now, because there aren't enough to be worth catching and there probably won't be again for decades. It's not like this was unprecedented, the same thing happened in California just a couple decades earlier.

Anchovies and sardines aren't as susceptible to overfishing as larger fish. Their fast reproductive cycle allows them to recover quite fast if conditions are right. Their populations are linked to ocean temperature, which is also something humans have an effect on. You can learn more about it here [noaa.gov]

these are not normal Korean jellyfish, these are an invasive species, looks like fat american variety, but actually traced to the torpedo-tubes of israeli submarines lurking in Asian waters.

usnavy has sonar which repeatedly and consistently kills most whales within its range. this fact has been largely ignored until last week. mass-media prefers to blame dead whales on the Northerners and Japanese.

these are not normal Korean jellyfish, these are an invasive species, looks like fat american variety, but actually traced to the torpedo-tubes of israeli submarines lurking in Asian waters.

usnavy has sonar which repeatedly and consistently kills most whales within its range. this fact has been largely ignored until last week. mass-media prefers to blame dead whales on the Northerners and Japanese.

Sorry to pop your silly geopolitical bubble, but the U.S. does not pull S. Korea's wires and China does not pull the Norks. Both Ks are adamantly opposed to foreign manipulation by anyone. China recently had to impose trade blocks for certain goods to the Norks because they couldn't pull their wires any other way. The U.S. would much rather remove its troops but would also like a trading partner that was not glowing red, so they keep them there.

Maybe we can eat the JEROS. As long as we have a self-sustaining population of killer robots roaming the seas replacing the natural predators, we should probably try to get something good out of them, right?:-)

I think we'll all look back with pride when we tell our grandchildren how we served on the day our country called us.

"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots." -The Secret War of Lisa Simpson

Well they are spineless and therefore stand for everything I stand against and stand against for everything I stand for. By launching a global offensive we can wipe the jellyfish out. If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

So instead of fish they are catching jelly fish.And their reaction is to design a robot to kill jelly fish.Why not simply catch the jelly fish and eat them?I know that in certain parts of china they eat jelly fish. I've had it and it's pretty good.If they just start eating those the population of jelly fish will naturally decrease without having to wastefully kill them for nothing.

the robot consists of a funnel made from rope and suspenders, an digital sensor (on off / perhaps optical to it can differentiate between a tuna and jelly fish) and a propeller (looks like electric outboard motor)

The jelly fish is detected, the electric motor is switched on and the jelly fish is sucked in and hacked by the rotating propeller.

That's just the business end. If you actually read the article, you'd know that the whole buoy-shaped contraption at the top of the page is the robot; it uses a camera to identify jellyfish and plots its own path to efficiently patrol through the swarm. It's an impressive computer vision and AI achievement.

This reminds me of SF short story, where people came up with idea of robotic doves (birds) acting as police and paralysing people who wanted to commit murder. But they had to adapt to do the job properly - to detect intent even in most ruthless killers. Soon they started to prevent people killing insects. After that, it was not possible to switch off TV set. And solution for that was to create s

This reminds me of SF short story, where people came up with idea of robotic doves (birds) acting as police and paralysing people who wanted to commit murder. But they had to adapt to do the job properly - to detect intent even in most ruthless killers. Soon they started to prevent people killing insects. After that, it was not possible to switch off TV set. And solution for that was to create self-evolving robotic killer hawks to catch the doves... anybody knows what was the name of the story, cannot find

Jellyfish attacks? They don't seem like they'd be the best at "attacking" people, but rather just floating close to shore and people swimming into them. It seems like people are provoking the jellies on accident and they're passively fighting back. Now we're setting killer robits out into the wild depths. What's next? Sharks? That would be horrible, but it makes sense according to the logic that if it attacks - kill it!

Ehm, what species of jellyfish are they hunting over there? Unless I remember incorrectly that is where some jellyfish you do not want to kill by hacking them up live (ie, it will increase the numbers of some species)

I was in Ganges Harbour (British Columbia) many years ago when a jellyfish bloom was underway. Rowing in a small wooden boat, I could see that the jellyfish were slowly floating toward the surface, then slowly floating back down. Each time one touched the surface it made a small, circular ripple. So many of these ripples were occurring, the surface of the water looked like it was raining, and for each jellyfish that happened to be touching the surface, there were dozens visible lower down. This was the case